BMW brand value hurdles Toyota's

BMW has bounced back in a brand value survey conducted by market research company, Millward Brown.

Toyota was deemed the world's most valuable automotive brand between 2006 and 2009, briefly losing out to BMW in 2010, before retaking the crown in 2011. But now BMW has returned the favour, top-scoring with a brand value of US $24.6 billion. The prestige brand's 10 per cent gain, year on year, almost seemed to come at the expense of volume-selling brand Toyota, which was rated at US $21.8 billion —  a 10 per cent reduction from the previous year's figure.

"As one of the great brands in the world, BMW has been absolutely consistent in the long-term regarding what is meaningfully different about their brand, in highly competitive market places," said Peter Walshe, Millward Brown global brand director, as quoted in Automotive News Europe.

To arrive at their conclusions, Millward Brown conducts interviews with over a million customers each year and correlates responses with statistical data supplied by Bloomberg and Datamonitor.

"Toyota is certainly seen as a good value, very reliable and very trustworthy, which are all tremendous qualities, especially for mid-range buyers," Walshe said, reflecting on Toyota's relegation to second spot in the survey. "The problem with Toyota has to do with its financials, not brand, due to the disasters, which were clearly out of its control."

The natural disasters in Japan and Thailand last year diminished Toyota's standing, Walshe explained, but Toyota was not the only Japanese company to see its brand equity eroded by external events. Honda, Nissan and Lexus all feature among the top 10 companies rated by Millward Brown's survey for brand equity, but all three have seen their respective brand value languish over the past 12 months.

For German companies, the situation was reversed. Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen and Audi all enjoyed higher brand values, due to each company's increased presence in the rapidly emerging market of China.

"The reason these three German brands are doing well is because German cars are benefitting tremendously from exports" to Asia, Walshe said.

Hyundai slipped into ninth place in the survey this year, the first Korean brand to achieve that. In order from one to 10, the top 10 automotive brands were:

BMW ($24.6*)
Toyota ($21.8*)
Mercedes-Benz ($16.1*)
Honda ($12.7*)
Nissan ($9.9*)
Volkswagen ($8.5*)
Ford ($7.0*)
Audi ($4.7*)
Hyundai ($3.6*)
Lexus ($3.4*)

* figures represent billions of US dollars.

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